Tom Cruise’s Vanity Fair Covers

We’ve loved Tom since his freshest-faced early days—“The Big Surprise,” we termed him on our cover in January of 1989, on the eve of his appearance in Born on the Fourth of July. That film earned Cruise his first Academy Award nomination, and he’s earned two more—and six additional V.F. cover appearances—since then. A look back at our favorites.

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In January 1989, Tom Cruise was promoting Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, a real-life story in which he played Ron Kovic. Cruise would earn his first Oscar nomination for the role.

June 1996, setting the world aflame with his best Baryshnikov—Cruise bowed that year as Ethan Hunt in the original Mission Impossible, a character he’s reprised three additional times (and he’s on board for a fifth).

In January 2002, in a spicy, half-nude cover, Cruise was photographed for V.F. for the first time as a single man. At the time of his first cover, he was married to Mimi Rogers; for covers two, three, and four, he was married to Nicole Kidman. The couple divorced in early 2001.